The Blog

The Supreme Adventure

“The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.”

—G.K. Chesterton, from his essay “On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family”. Collected in the book “In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton.” Available in softcover and e-book.